The Canucks made their final cuts today to get their roster under the 23-man limit in advance of Saturday's season opener at home against Anaheim. They re-assigned nine players to the Chicago Wolves in all including Jordan Schroeder, Bill Sweatt, promising banger Darren Archibald, Anton Rodin, Andrew Gordon, Peter Andersson, Derek Joslin, Kevin Connauton and Joe Cannata.

Kevin Connauton, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was born and raised in Edmonton, responded to his demotion with a pretty funny riot joke on Twitter:

BREAKING: Vancouver PD deals with riots after news of Kevin Connauton's release to the AHL. All 7 protesters have been arrested & charged.

Mike Gillis spoke with David Ebner of the Globe and Mail about the scientific, objective work the Canucks do with #fancystats and their "human performance plan." If you're a regular Canucks Army reader you'll likely be familiar with many of the concepts discussed (obviously it's extremely hard to get new information out of the team on this subject, and they're right to guard proprietary information like hawks) but this is a fantastic round up and an absolute must read take.

In a similar vein, Ben Kuzma has a really interesting bit posing the question: did Mike Gillis waited too long on the Luongo trade front. My personal view on this: if the best offer the Leafs put on the table included Tyler Bozak as a centerpiece, then waiting was absolutely the right call.

Jason Botchford, for what it's worth, was very impressed with Jason Garrison's puckmoving ability in Thursday night's full-team scrimmage. He says Garrison looked like Christian Ehrhoff out there, you know, except without the elite skating ability or the third-pairing quality gap control.

Finally, this is pretty hilarious. Kesler tells a lucky season ticket holder that he's been selected to take part in an honorary "we're really sorry about the lockout!" face-off before Saturday night's home-opener. The fan in question keeps Kesler on hold for about five minutes because he was in the middle of a Pelvic Exam. Yep:

Thomas Drance lives in Toronto, eats spicy food and writes about hockey. He is the editor in chief of the Nation Network (a.k.a Overlord), and an opinionated blowhard to boot. You can follow him on twitter @thomasdrance.

Gotta say that the Ebner article reads like advertising. "Calling all potential free agents, we do management right." I know it's important, and part of getting players to sign for less, but still , Ebner might have tried to find a more critical perspective than just repeat Gillis' talking points. Henrik's playing time is also limited by the fact that Kesler gets lots of 5v5 assignments (for example). But nice to see bloggers' names turning up as authorities (go Cam Charron!).

You raise an interesting point - It's always a dilemma when you are writing a profile of someone; how important is it to just let the speaker's words stand for themselves? In this case, who would be able to speak on what the piece is focusing on? Charron struck me as a pretty good choice.

One of the problems with doing a story like this is that statistical analysis in hockey is still rather new as a mainstream concept, so who do you go talk to? Should we have heard more from Charron? Maybe, but in the end, this is a story about what *Gillis* does; leave it to the reader to make a judgment about his approach to management.

Also, flip the question on its head - did you learn things about Mike Gillis that you didn't know before?